¹³ Letters were sent by couriers^(A) to each of the royal provinces telling the officials to destroy, kill, and annihilate all the Jewish people—young and old, women and children—and plunder their possessions on a single day,^(B) the thirteenth day of Adar, the twelfth month.^[a]

¹¹ The king’s edict gave the Jews in each and every city the right to assemble and defend themselves, to destroy, kill, and annihilate every ethnic and provincial army hostile to them, including women and children, and to take their possessions as spoils of war.^(A)